Meta Is Creating a New A.I. Lab to Pursue ‘Superintelligence'
Meta is preparing to unveil a new artificial intelligence research lab dedicated to pursuing 'superintelligence,' a hypothetical A.I. system that exceeds the powers of the human brain, as the tech giant jockeys to stay competitive in the technology race, according to four people with the knowledge of the company's plans.
Meta has tapped Alexandr Wang, 28, the founder and chief executive of the A.I. start-up Scale AI, to join the new lab, the people said, and has been in talks to invest billions of dollars in his company as part of a deal that would also bring other Scale employees to the company. Meta has offered seven- to nine-figure compensation packages to dozens of researchers from leading A.I. companies such as OpenAI and Google, with some agreeing to join, according to the people.
The new lab is part of a larger reorganization of Meta's A.I. efforts, the people said. The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has recently grappled with internal management struggles over the technology, as well as employee churn and several product releases that fell flat, two of the people said.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, has invested billions of dollars into turning his company into an A.I. powerhouse. Since OpenAI released the ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, the tech industry has raced to build increasingly powerful A.I. Mr. Zuckerberg has pushed his company to incorporate A.I. across its products, including in its smart glasses and a recently released app, Meta AI.
Staying in the race is crucial for Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, with the technology likely to be the future for the industry. The giants have pumped money into start-ups and their own A.I. labs. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, while Amazon has plowed $8 billion into the A.I. start-up Anthropic.
The behemoths have also spent billions to hire employees from high-profile start-ups and license their technology, essentially buying everything but the companies. Last year, Google agreed to pay $3 billion to license technology and hire technologists and executives from Character.AI, a start-up that builds chatbots for personal conversations.
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